Outlook.com sheds its preview tag, claims 60 million users already

The Hotmail migration will now begin.

Taking much less time in beta than Gmail, Microsoft's Outlook.com e-mail service has been stripped of its preview label and is now suitable for and open to all.

During its preview, Microsoft claims some 60 million users signed up. That number will grow enormously in coming months, as Microsoft will now begin migrating hundreds of millions of Hotmail users to the new user interface. The company claims the service will scale to a billion users.

Microsoft is also trumpeting Outlook.com's integration with SkyDrive, saying nearly half of Outlook.com's users have taken advantage of SkyDrive to share half a billion documents and photos.

The company is also extolling the virtues of the service's social networking integration. Outlook.com can show updates from LinkedIn, Twitter, and Facebook directly within the mail front-end. in addition to helping people keep up to date with their contacts, this also means they see fewer ads than they saw in Hotmail.com; the portion of the interface that's used to show ads is also used to show social networking information.

To go with the live launch, Microsoft has some new ads showing off Outlook.com (and before that, Hotmail.com) features designed to make it easier to manage newsletters, mailing lists, and all of the other not-quite-spam, not-quite-ham that many of our inboxes are filled with.

The UI is awesome. Very clean and easy to use. And I really don't like Gmail anymore. It's clunky and recently has been really buggy. I would switch to Outlook.com in a second if their Android app wasn't a complete and total piece of crap. You can't even archive emails in it.

The UI is awesome. Very clean and easy to use. And I really don't like Gmail anymore. It's clunky and recently has been really buggy. I would switch to Outlook.com in a second if their Android app wasn't a complete and total piece of crap. You can't even archive emails in it.

I've been ready to make the switch for a few months, but by the time I remembered to change my live ID, they took out the feature for over 2 months. Held off because I have a WP7 and wasn't ready to reset the device until then. :'(

I've been using Outlook.com since it became available - really do like it. Since I am a Hotmail/Live Plus user, my experience is a little different (no ads), but its been good on the whole.

I seem to recall Hotmail /Live having dual factor authentication as an option; not sure if Outlook.com does or not. And they never upgraded the calendar, oddly enough. SkyDrive is great, though, and I love having it and basic Office functionality. Not enough for a power user, but enough for me.

I wonder how many of the new accounts are heavily used and how many are just placeholders?

Shortly after the service launched I secured accounts relating to my standard identities as a hedge against Google doing something that offends me enough to endure the pain of transferring hundreds (thousands?) of site accounts over to a new address but haven't done anything with them since.

I love the new look, and it integrates really well with my WP8 -- I really want to migrate from Gmail, but I have 3Gb's of archived mail in Gmail, and it's all labeled and categorized -- unfortunately, there's no way to transfer the mailbox over and preserve the metadata.

If MS really want people to migrate to their service - then providing a more powerful migration tool would be a good start. Google Gmail label functionality can easily be duplicated in Outlook using Categories, but there's no way to transfer the relationship.

And I wish they're hurry up and fix the calendar view so it doesn't look or function like the old Hotmail calendar system

The UI is awesome. Very clean and easy to use. And I really don't like Gmail anymore. It's clunky and recently has been really buggy. I would switch to Outlook.com in a second if their Android app wasn't a complete and total piece of crap. You can't even archive emails in it.

just use EAS? Or am I missing something it can't do?

That also does not support archiving email. I don't want to delete all my email. Manually moving each email to the archive folder isn't a convenient option either.

So by "migrating" Hotmail users over to Outlook, does that mean that I'll be able to change the email address on my WP7 phone without having to wipe the device? Are they actually changing @hotmail.com addresses to @outlook.com, or just letting people move as they see fit?

The UI is awesome. Very clean and easy to use. And I really don't like Gmail anymore. It's clunky and recently has been really buggy. I would switch to Outlook.com in a second if their Android app wasn't a complete and total piece of crap. You can't even archive emails in it.

just use EAS? Or am I missing something it can't do?

That also does not support archiving email. I don't want to delete all my email. Manually moving each email to the archive folder isn't a convenient option either.

Oh alright, I personally don’t mind the two clicks for moving mails to archive folder instead of a one-click-archive function, however I’m doing most of my inbox organization in desktop Outlook and not on the phone.

So by "migrating" Hotmail users over to Outlook, does that mean that I'll be able to change the email address on my WP7 phone without having to wipe the device? Are they actually changing @hotmail.com addresses to @outlook.com, or just letting people move as they see fit?

They'll just migrate you to the new UI. You keep all your old addresses.

I registered for an account just to see what the fuss was about. I hardly use it since I already have 4 other email accounts that I use for various things, but I do have to say that Outlook.com is one sexy looking webmail client. That and skydrive are really well designed and very easy to use and navigate. MS has really upped their game as I don't think I would have ever said that about hotmail or about anything MS put out just 5 years ago.

So by "migrating" Hotmail users over to Outlook, does that mean that I'll be able to change the email address on my WP7 phone without having to wipe the device? Are they actually changing @hotmail.com addresses to @outlook.com, or just letting people move as they see fit?

Why do you have to wipe the device in any event? Just add a @outlook.com alias to whatever microsoft account (with whatever email address) you're using now?

I like it a lot, and I've begun using it for side projects where I want a separate email address.

But I cannot switch away from my main Gmail account because the new compose screen that allows you to compose over the top of material you are referencing is too useful to turn my back on and has no analog on outlook.com

So by "migrating" Hotmail users over to Outlook, does that mean that I'll be able to change the email address on my WP7 phone without having to wipe the device? Are they actually changing @hotmail.com addresses to @outlook.com, or just letting people move as they see fit?

MS can't forcibly change domains like that even if they wanted to because of the huge number of collisions caused by people jumping on outlook.com identities who don't have the corresponding hotmail.com one.

Questions: Exactly how many of those 60 million of those are "legacy" Hotmail users? How many of them moved from other email services, whether they be ex-Gmail, AOL, Yahoo, or users of other email services? Also are there people just signing up for the accounts to be able to use other MS services (i.e. Windows 8 authentication, Xbox Live Services, etc.)? Of course I don't think we'll get the answers to those questions, just like we won't get exact answers on Win8 sales (which tells me that those sales are probably not just in the tank, but draining out of the tank and into the swamp).

No IMAP, no sale. Also, they seem hell-bent on booting desktop mail clients even from the POP sessions ("You can't login because you have to visit our website first"). I got myself a firstname.surname@outlook thinking I'd be using it as a business address and I can't be arsed to open it.

The UI is awesome. Very clean and easy to use. And I really don't like Gmail anymore. It's clunky and recently has been really buggy. I would switch to Outlook.com in a second if their Android app wasn't a complete and total piece of crap. You can't even archive emails in it.

just use EAS? Or am I missing something it can't do?

That also does not support archiving email. I don't want to delete all my email. Manually moving each email to the archive folder isn't a convenient option either.

Oh alright, I personally don’t mind the two clicks for moving mails to archive folder instead of a one-click-archive function, however I’m doing most of my inbox organization in desktop Outlook and not on the phone.

Three clicks actually Four clicks if you're doing it from your inbox view. Unless my GS3 email app is different than other android email apps. For comparison Gmail is one swipe from the inbox or one click while reading it.

Read, archive, and reply are the top three things I do in email. If one of those things is even mildly annoying, I'm not going to use the app. I consider four clicks annoying. Not having archive support on your phone may work for some, but its a show stopper for me.

Outlook is a privacy nightmare. Length limitations on passwords, a lack of two-factor authentication, along with all the social data saturated at one point make you real vulnerable.

I absolutely hate all the social data being at a central point, not just because of security and privacy implications, but also because of the fact that I don't want to be inundated with social network alerts and the like.

So by "migrating" Hotmail users over to Outlook, does that mean that I'll be able to change the email address on my WP7 phone without having to wipe the device? Are they actually changing @hotmail.com addresses to @outlook.com, or just letting people move as they see fit?

I can't specifically say about the WP7 experience (windows phone 7 phone, is a little redundant). However you can choose the first part of your @outlook.com address, or try and keep your old. You will be able to still receive your old @hotmail mail until you've changed all the mailing services you might have.You may still receive junk mail from your old address, and they will disappear once you've removed the old account.

I had already migrated my old hotmail account when the service first launched. Migration has always been possible since before this article, and should be amended to reflect that.

Hotmail migration has been possible since launch. It will be mandatory & automatic come summer.

Yes, this is more along the lines of what the article should say if indeed this is mandatory & automatic. More so seeing as this is the first mention that I've seen that the change will be mandatory and automatic..

Outlook is a privacy nightmare. Length limitations on passwords, a lack of two-factor authentication, along with all the social data saturated at one point make you real vulnerable.

I absolutely hate all the social data being at a central point, not just because of security and privacy implications, but also because of the fact that I don't want to be inundated with social network alerts and the like.

I actually switched to using Outlook.com specifically because I can use their aliases feature to gain some additional security/privacy.

Basically what I did was register an account with address that I have no intention on giving away to anyone. Then I created 5 email aliases, one to give to family and friends, one for financial related sites, one for forums/social stuff, one for online shopping and one for junk mail. Mail sent to each address goes into it's own little folder so everything is kept separate. These addresses I can freely give out and don't have to worry about being used against me because you can't log into the account using the alias. The only way to get in is to use the address I created when I signed up.

The UI is awesome. Very clean and easy to use. And I really don't like Gmail anymore. It's clunky and recently has been really buggy. I would switch to Outlook.com in a second if their Android app wasn't a complete and total piece of crap. You can't even archive emails in it.

just use EAS? Or am I missing something it can't do?

That also does not support archiving email. I don't want to delete all my email. Manually moving each email to the archive folder isn't a convenient option either.

Oh alright, I personally don’t mind the two clicks for moving mails to archive folder instead of a one-click-archive function, however I’m doing most of my inbox organization in desktop Outlook and not on the phone.

Three clicks actually Four clicks if you're doing it from your inbox view. Unless my GS3 email app is different than other android email apps. For comparison Gmail is one swipe from the inbox or one click while reading it.

Read, archive, and reply are the top three things I do in email. If one of those things is even mildly annoying, I'm not going to use the app. I consider four clicks annoying. Not having archive support on your phone may work for some, but its a show stopper for me.

You won’t believe it, but I’m afraid I had a complete blackout thinking every mobile mail app works like the WP8 one does Well my only excuse: it’s after 5pm over here...

You could drop your Android however (or just stay with Google) Never mind!

I actually switched to using Outlook.com specifically because I can use their aliases feature to gain some additional security/privacy.

Basically what I did was register an account with address that I have no intention on giving away to anyone. Then I created 5 email aliases, one to give to family and friends, one for financial related sites, one for forums/social stuff, one for online shopping and one for junk mail. Mail sent to each address goes into it's own little folder so everything is kept separate. These addresses I can freely give out and don't have to worry about being used against me because you can't log into the account using the alias. The only way to get in is to use the address I created when I signed up.

For me, this is the best thing about it. The big 3 free email accounts I use for nothing more than spam catchers, registering on web sites, etc. My ISP email I have had for 15 years is the only one I use for real email.

Still has the old, putrid Hotmail calendar. Also Outlook.com is missing many key features of Gmail like the ability to search categories globally or within the categories view, nested categories and many other things. Gmail is so far ahead of Outlook.com that it's not even funny.

Questions: Exactly how many of those 60 million of those are "legacy" Hotmail users? How many of them moved from other email services, whether they be ex-Gmail, AOL, Yahoo, or users of other email services? Also are there people just signing up for the accounts to be able to use other MS services (i.e. Windows 8 authentication, Xbox Live Services, etc.)? Of course I don't think we'll get the answers to those questions, just like we won't get exact answers on Win8 sales (which tells me that those sales are probably not just in the tank, but draining out of the tank and into the swamp).

Stop giving WinTards hell. They just call it hell, but it's the truth. Good ole Harry Truman.